by Jane Lebak
Kevin approached Jay in the darkened room, glanced at the monitor, and then sat at the bedside.
Dad said, “He's doing all right for now.”
Kevin whispered, “I'm scared.” The admission surprised him. In the dusk of the room, he felt death so much nearer than with a machine to keep it at bay.
Dad took a deep breath, but before saying anything he walked out of the room.
Kevin said lowly, “Jay? I made them take it off. I'm sorry. I know it's what you want, but I'm still sorry. I made them do it.”
As if rousing from a dream, Jay fluttered open his eyes. He extended a hand, and Kevin caught it by reflex after so many times this week. Jay raised his other hand to his mouth, then pursed his lips, swallowed, and sighed.
He rasped the words, “Thank you.”
Kevin put his head on the bed against Jay's side and cried. But Jay kept breathing, and when morning came, it found him breathing still.
Seven
Good job, Jay.
Yep, that's why he'd gone to seminary and gotten ordained: in order to yell at his brother. Wonderful that he could preach about loving your enemy and then lose his temper with Kevin.
Jay wished for once that he could still head to a gym to pummel a sandbag and then run on a treadmill until he outdistanced himself. Instead he sat at a table in the upstairs kitchen, pounded out a Christmas homily, and ignored the telephone when it rang in the parish office. Let Mrs. D. take the calls. She could handle anything, and if he was needed, she knew where he was.
Yes, yet another thing he could ask forgiveness for. Why was he able to listen to the most outrageous things in the confessional without even remembering them afterward, but his brother instantly sent him into a rage?
Your brother could always push your buttons. Why? Because Jay and Kevin had helped install one another's buttons. It only made sense.
Jay looked at the crucifix and said, “See, you're lucky. You didn't have a younger brother.”
Footsteps above Jay caught his attention. He often heard footsteps in the basement, but here he was at the top floor. Meaning the only place above him was the roof.
After a moment, he heard them again, along with some of the boys calling to one another. He went to the window and focused as hard as he could. Three dark shapes moved about beneath the window, which he slid up to stick his head outside.
“Hey, Father Jay!”
That didn't come from the ground, nor from directly overhead. Jay looked straight out at the telephone pole at the curb. “Spider? What are you doing?”
“We're gonna have cable, Father! There's a ton of Christmas specials on this week.”
Oh, for the love of little green apples. His breath frothed out in the frigid air, and he felt the heat getting sucked from the building. Jay said, “You can't do that.”
Spider sounded cheerful. “Sure I can. My dad taught me how.”
“Terrific. My dad taught me how to change a tire.”
“My dad did that too.”
“Spider, get down from there.”
Everyone stopped moving. From above, Nick said, “Why?”
“I'm not having you guys steal cable.”
“I bought the cable from my job at the hardware store. They even gave me the employee discount.”
Jay counted to three in his head. “You know what I'm talking about.”
“How can it be stealing? It's not like everyone else isn't going to have it because of this.”
“Theft of services. No.”
“I'm not stealing anyone's service either. I'm doing it myself.”
Jay knew it was wrong; in the heat of the moment he couldn't figure out exactly why. “I'm not debating moral theology while you're twenty feet in the air. Just get the heck down from there and get inside. All of you.”
“Aw, Father!”
Jay pulled his head into the kitchen and slammed the window. He waited, braced for impact. Footsteps scrambled over on the roof until they reached the fire-escape, and one of the bedroom windows slid up with a wooden hiss. Downstairs, the front door opened, and a large number of feet trooped up the stairs. Shortly five boys (well, four boys and Maria) assembled in the kitchen.
Jay knew better than to expect a warm-up from Nick. “What the hell is your problem?” Nick shouted. “Well? Nobody gives a shit if we're running a line from the street into the house!”
“I care.”
“Nobody but you, then!” Jay could feel Nick's breath, the boy was so close. “Are you afraid we're all going to hell because we watch a few TV programs without paying a boatload of money to some fat cows in big offices who don't even care if we—”
“Nick, calm down.”
“I don't have to calm down! What the hell could anyone possibly care about whether we watch TV or not?”
Jay folded his arms. “I'm not having this discussion with you screaming.”
“Hey, chill.” Spider pushed Nick back a step. “Get a grip.”
“What kind of stupid—”
“Sit down, man.” Spider thrust Nick toward one of the chairs. “I'm serious. Sit. You're making an idiot out of yourself.”
“Who does he think he is?”
“He owns the house.” Spider upticked his voice so it sounded more like a question than a statement. “That's who he is. And unless they have cable piped into the cardboard boxes behind McDonalds, you better remember that.”
Nick pulled out the chair. “Fine. You go kissing his ass.”
Eddie came into the kitchen in response to all the noise. Jay said, “I'll talk to you about it in a minute, Nick. But first, Spider, you know I can't have you running an illegal cable line into the rectory.”
Spider pointed to Jamie and Maria. “It's for the kids. They want to watch the Christmas specials.”
“That's extraordinarily generous of you, willing to go to jail for the kids.”
“No one's going to jail over this, man. You just run the line in and hook it up, and no one cares.” Spider slipped his hands in his pockets. “The cable guys don't even care. Geez, it was a cable guy who showed us how to do it in the first place.”
Jay folded his arms and regarded Spider.
“You're not going to let us do it?”
Jay raised one eyebrow.
“You suck,” Nick said.
“It's the law.” Jay sighed. “Maybe it doesn't make sense, but stealing is stealing, and you are bunking in a Catholic church for now.”
Spider said, “What about the kids?”
“What about them? When did TV become a daily requirement?”
An uncomfortable silence filled the kitchen until Eddie said, “But it's Christmas shows. Like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.”
“And that movie about Santa Claus coming to Macy's.”
“And that other one about the angel getting its wings when the bells ring.”
Jay's heart caught, and he averted his gaze.
What could be more normal than sitting in front of the TV at Christmas watching those silly Rankin and Bass shows? Or any movie with Santa Claus? No, it wasn't a mandatory requirement. But hadn't they already lost so much just by being homeless and not having families who cared whether they died?
“Are you going to let us?” said Spider.
“I'll think of something,” Jay said, “but you can't hook up stolen cable TV.”
“I hate you,” Nick said.
“Maybe you've never heard of the invention of the VCR,” Jay said, “or the DVD player. I have. Someone can loan us the shows, and you can have your TV the right way.” He looked at Spider and thought he could make out the boy's grin. “Not only will you not be stealing, but then someone else gets to be generous.”
Nick stalked away, and the other kids dispersed. The boys' music went on at concentration-shattering volumes, so Jay gathered his books to head back downstairs. He caught motion from his peripheral vision. “Eddie? Could you help me carry these?”
As they descended into the basement, th
e air turned sweltering. Last winter, before he'd heated the upstairs, he'd depended on an unreliable space heater to get at least his bedroom warm (offering prayers every day that it not burn down the rectory). The heat had never penetrated the bathroom or the kitchen. This year, heating the upstairs, he was tempted to open a window or take off his shirt. When he'd first moved in, he'd wondered about those pipes running across the basement ceiling. He'd hung is clothes on them to dry. Now he knew. The pipes carried steam upstairs but seemed to shed all the actual heat right over his head.
“You can just put those all on the desk.”
Eddie shuffled into the room and put down the stack. “Father Jay? Can I ask a question?”
Jay asked him to sit, and the boy did. Sometimes Jay wished he had better vision, because even with glasses he couldn't make out Eddie's face clearly. He suspected Eddie looked different since the storeowners often rejected him on sight. No, they couldn't use a boy to do work for them. No, they wouldn't make a job for him. No, no, no. It was worse than giving away kittens, and once Jay had gotten stuck doing that too.
“They said I'm lazy. Because I don't have a job.”
Jay swallowed. “I've been looking for one. It's hard to find one now.”
“Nick came after I did.” Eddie thought a moment. “Nick has a job.”
Nick very nearly didn't have a job, not after he'd had a shouting match with a patron at the Italian restaurant. Jay almost ransomed his soul to keep Nick employed.
Eddie's shoulder slumped. “It's because I'm stupid.”
“You're not stupid.” That much came auto-matically, but after that Jay groped for the words. “It's hard to find the right fit for you. Nick would fit in anywhere if he worked at it. I know you'll work hard wherever you end up. You're a good kid. But it's hard to find the right place for you.”
Eddie processed it all. “You think I'm a good kid?”
“When I need help, you're the first by my side. You're generous and giving. And you're sensitive, which is why you take it to heart when the boys tease you.”
A small blond presence at the door interrupted Jay.
Eddie had a large grin. “Jamie!”
He scooped the little boy in his arms, and with a grin he cuddled the boy against his chest. “I was coming up soon.”
Jamie clung to Eddie's shoulders and pushed his face into his neck. Eddie exchanged a smile with Jay. “I'll take him up.”
Jay nodded. “You get along well with them.”
Eddie left, but then turned back at the door. “Thanks.”
Jay chuckled, and then he was alone again with his almost-written homily.
Why did Nick have to harass Eddie like that? Weren't all the boys in the same boat? Why find the one most vulnerable and try to drive him away? There wasn't much upstairs, but there was shelter and food enough to go around.
Thinking of Nick and the boy's open antagonism, Jay grew cold even in the sweltering basement. He wasn't joking with Kevin—Spider had been just as bad when he'd arrived in the summer, hot and hungry, hanging out on the fringes of the Archangels, eating one meal a day from the Caf and vanishing in-between times, until the winter had driven him into the upstairs like an animal sensing shelter.
Jay had no clue what had reached Spider, no clue what would reach Nick.
Last summer, Jay had borrowed a bunch of garden tools from a suburban parish and tilled up a little parish garden, the idea being that he would plant tomatoes and use them for the Caf. It had been a fun project: he called it Seed Time and explained one week during his homily that sixty-nine cents worth of seeds yields about a hundred dollars worth of tomatoes, and that something was going to grow on the parish lawn, so they might as well eat it. Brandishing a copy of Mrs. D's recipe for Dandelion Soup, he'd threatened everyone with it unless they showed up to help plow the ground and set the garden.
Afterward, weeding the cleared plot was Jay's responsibility. The dirt, while apparently not well-suited to tomatoes, was Heaven itself as far as the dandelions and the thistles were concerned. Mrs. D. warned him that no one had ever won a war against thistles, but Jay did. Every day he went out in the mid-morning after Mass and, using the time to meditate, scanned the ground with his pinpoint vision, uprooting any little shoots one at a time. Over the course of the entire summer, eventually he would wear them out so the leftover roots would expend all their energy and die underground.
One mid-morning with the temperatures set to top ninety-five, Spider had wandered over from the alley behind the nearest tenement. The only other motion was the priest weeding the garden.
Jay noticed as Spider's shadow fell across the vegetable garden. The words appeared in his head: Whoever receives a small child such as this has received me.
Okay, he thought to God. Bring it on.
Then he chuckled. “It's kind of hot this morning.”
Spider just sat, knees hugged to his chest.
Jay pulled up another dandelion. “What brings you out here?”
Spider shrugged. “So, you want me to get some tools?”
Jay usually just got his hands into the soil, but he said, “That would be good.”
Spider walked away. He'd been hanging around the church for three weeks at this point.
When he'd returned, dumping a few trowels and a weeding tool onto the soil, Spider squatted, watching Father Jay work, then took a trowel and started unearthing thistles. Jay said, “Make sure you get the root, otherwise it'll have to be weeded again.”
“Huh?”
“Thistles have tap roots, big roots that go all the way down. If you just pull off the leaves, the thistle grows back.”
Spider tugged too hard and broke the root. “How do you do that?”
“You'll get a feel for it. Try a more gentle pull and twist, and see if you can get your fingers around the root.”
They worked in silence. As the sun grew higher, Jay said something about sunburn, but there are things that hurt worse than sunburn, so together they persevered. After a quarter of the bed was clear, Spider's slightly accented voice said, “So, you talk a lot with God, right?”
Jay sat back. “I do.”
“So did he ever tell you why there's all this evil shit in the world?”
Jay dusted his hands on his pants. “No, he never explained about that.”
Spider's hardened face was like a mask. “But really. I mean, why does God let awful things happen?”
“There's theory, and there's your life. I could give you a lecture about free will, but your eyes would glaze over and you'd walk away convinced I didn't care. A lecture could never answer your real question, which is 'Why me? Why my life?'“
Spider kept working. “My stepdad threw me out of the house. He said he'd kill me if I went back. My mom said I'd better go. I'm just waiting for the whiskey to finish him off.”
Jay groped for the right words to tell the kid his mother actually did love him, and he found his mind blank, so he said nothing. The Bible said the Holy Spirit would tell the disciples what to say; Jay himself always figured that was as good a cue as any that the Holy Spirit wanted him to shut up.
Spider said, “So I can't go home again until the guy kicks off. What am I going to do?”
Jay murmured, “What are you going to do?” The sun had gotten still higher, and they'd lost any shade from the nearby trees. Even the cars passing on the street sounded hot, their engines muffled by the humidity as if the noise was too exhausted to carry far. “You'll be a survivor. You'll plug away automatically for a while, and one day it'll come right down to it and you'll have to decide what you want. It may take years. You'll feel like you survived for a reason, and you'll have to figure out what that reason is. You will never get over it, but you'll carry it forward with you. Your mom's choice, your stepdad's boozing—all that will never be good, but you'll have made good come out of it. It'll probably grow so deep down inside you that eventually you can't imagine yourself without it.”
Spider's voice remained f
lat. “I hate them both.”
“I don't blame you.”
“How messed up do you have to be to kick out your own kid?”
Jay said, “Do you hate God?”
Spider looked up in fear.
“I think it's understandable,” and Jay made sure to keep his tone calm, “to be so mad you can't even speak to God for a long time. But you've got to do something with the rage, if only to keep it from burning yourself out.”
“So you think I should go to church and talk to God?”
“I think you should do whatever helps,” Jay said. “Even if it's weeding a flower bed.”
Spider turned his head aside. “Well, I'm not becoming a priest.” When Jay laughed out loud, Spider said, “I'd rather be a soldier like you were. Or a cop.”
“The police and I are doing the same work.” Jay sat back on his heels, rubbing the dirt granules from his palms. “They're cutting off the leaves, and I'm pulling out the roots. What you're going to learn, Spider, is that evil has taproots. You can slice it apart all you want, but if that root's intact below, the leaves will show up again. You've never completely weeded a garden. But it helps to be doing something, and both kinds of work are worthwhile.”
“I don't really get you. You became a priest to fight bad guys?”
“I became a priest because I fell headfirst into something I didn't understand but loved anyhow. Keeping up the fight is an unexpected bonus. It's like getting back something you thought you'd lost forever.”
Spider said, “I want my home back.”
Jay winced. “If I could, I'd give it to you.”
Without another word, Spider arose and walked away.
In that summertime brightness, Jay had looked at his dirt-covered knees and thought, There wasn't anything I could have said that would have helped him, but shouldn't I have been able to do better than that?
